The American Patriots hastily prepared to oppose him. Colonel Charles McDowell of Burke County, North Carolina, with a small force of militia was just south of the line at a point on the Broad River when he heard that Ferguson was sweeping on northward. In haste he sent a call for help across the mountains to Sevier and Shelby. Sevier had his hands full at Watauga, but he dispatched two hundred of his troops; and Isaac Shelby, with a similar force from Sullivan County crossed the mountains to McDowell's assistance. These “overmountain men” or “backwater men,” as they were called east of the hills, were trained in Sevier's method of Indian warfare—the secret approach through the dark, the swift dash, and the swifter flight. “Fight strong and run away fast” was the Indian motto, as their women had often been heard to call it after the red men as they ran yelling to fall on the whites. The frontiersmen had adapted the motto to fit their case, as they had also made their own the Indian tactics of ambuscade and surprise attacks at dawn. To sleep, or ride if needs must, by night, and to fight by day and make off, was to them a reasonable soldier's life.
But Ferguson was a night marauder. The terror of his name, which grew among the Whigs of the Back Country until the wildest legends about his ferocity were current, was due chiefly to a habit he had of pouncing on his foes in the middle of the night and pulling them out of bed to give fight or die. It was generally both fight and die, for these dark adventures of his were particularly successful. Ferguson knew no neutrals or conscientious objectors; any man who would not carry arms for the King was a traitor, and his life and goods were forfeit. A report of his reads: “The attack being made at night, no quarter could be given.” Hence his wolfish fame. “Werewolf” would have been a fit name for him for, though he was a wolf at night, in the daylight he was a man and, as we have seen, a chivalrous one.
In the guerrilla fighting that went on for a brief time between the overmountain men and various detachments of Ferguson's forces, sometimes one side, sometimes the other, won the heat. But the field remained open. Neither side could claim the mastery. In a minor engagement fought at Musgrove's Mill on the Enoree, Shelby's command came off victor and was about to pursue the enemy towards Ninety-Six when a messenger from McDowell galloped madly into camp with word of General Gates's crushing defeat at Camden. This was a warning for Shelby's guerrillas to flee as birds to their mountains, or Ferguson would cut them off from the north and wedge them in between his own force and the victorious Cornwallis. McDowell's men, also on the run for safety, joined them. For forty-eight hours without food or rest they rode a race with Ferguson, who kept hard on their trail until they disappeared into the mystery of the winding mountain paths they alone knew.
Ferguson reached the gap where they had swerved into the towering hills only half an hour after their horses' hoofs had pounded across it. Here he turned back. His troops were exhausted from the all-night ride and, in any case, there were not enough of them to enable him to cross the mountains and give the Watauga men battle on their own ground with a fair promise of victory. So keeping east of the hills but still close to them, Ferguson turned into Burke County, North Carolina. He sat him down in Gilbert Town (present Lincolnton, Lincoln County) at the foot of the Blue Ridge and indited a letter to the “Back Water Men,” telling them that if they did not lay down their arms and return to their rightful allegiance, he would come over their hills and raze their settlements and hang their leaders. He paroled a kinsman of Shelby's, whom he had taken prisoner in the chase, and sent him home with the letter. Then he set about his usual business of gathering up Tories and making soldiers of them, and of hunting down rebels.
One of the “rebels” was a certain Captain Lytle. When Ferguson drew up at Lytle's door, Lytle had already made his escape; but Mrs. Lytle was there. She was a very handsome woman and she had dressed herself in her best to receive Ferguson, who was reported a gallant as well as a wolf. After a few spirited passages between the lady in the doorway and the officer on the white horse before it, the latter advised Mrs. Lytle to use her influence to bring her husband back to his duty. She became grave then and answered that her husband would never turn traitor to his country Ferguson frowned at the word “traitor,” but presently he said: “Madam, I admire you as the handsomest woman I have seen in North Carolina. I even half way admire your zeal in a bad cause. But take my word for it, the rebellion has had its day and is now virtually put down. Give my regards to Captain Lytle and tell him to come in. He will not be asked to compromise his honor. His verbal pledge not again to take up arms against the King is all that will be asked of him.” ¹
[¹] Draper, King's Mountain and its Heroes, pp. 151-53.
This was another phase of the character of the one-armed Highlander whose final challenge to the back water men was now being considered in every log cabin beyond the hills. A man who would not shoot an enemy in the back, who was ready to put the same faith in another soldier's honor which he knew was due to his own, yet in battle a wolfish fighter who leaped through the dark to give no quarter and to take none—he was fit challenger to those other mountaineers who also had a chivalry of their own, albeit they too were wolves of war.
When Shelby on the Holston received Ferguson's pungent letter, he flung himself on his horse and rode posthaste to Watauga to consult with Sevier. He found the bank of the Nolichucky teeming with merrymakers. Nolichucky Jack was giving an immense barbecue and a horse race. Without letting the festival crowd have an inkling of the serious nature of Shelby's errand, the two men drew apart to confer. It is said to have been Sevier's idea that they should muster the forces of the western country and go in search of Ferguson ere the latter should be able to get sufficient reinforcements to cross the mountains. Sevier, like Ferguson, always preferred to seek his foe, knowing well the advantage of the offensive. Messengers were sent to Colonel William Campbell of the Virginia settlements on the Clinch, asking his aid. Campbell at first refused, thinking it better to fortify the positions they held and let Ferguson come and put the mountains between himself and Cornwallis. On receipt of a second message, however, he concurred. The call to arms was heard up and down the valleys, and the frontiersmen poured into Watauga. The overhill men were augmented by McDowell's troops from Burke County, who had dashed over the mountains a few weeks before in their escape from Ferguson.
At daybreak on the 26th of September they mustered at the Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga, over a thousand strong. It was a different picture they made from that other great gathering at the same spot when Henderson had made his purchase in money of the Dark and Bloody Ground, and Sevier and Robertson had bought for the Wataugans this strip of Tennessee. There were no Indians in this picture. Dragging Canoe, who had uttered his bloody prophecy, had by these very men been driven far south into the caves of the Tennessee River. But the Indian prophecy still hung over them, and in this day with a heavier menace. Not with money, now, were they to seal their purchase of the free land by the western waters. There had been no women in that other picture, only the white men who were going forward to open the way and the red men who were retreating. But in this picture there were women—wives and children, mothers, sisters, and sweethearts. All the women of the settlement were there at this daybreak muster to cheer on their way the men who were going out to battle that they might keep the way of liberty open not for men only but for women and children also. And the battle to which the men were now going forth must be fought against Back Country men of their own stripe under a leader who, in other circumstances, might well have been one of themselves—a primitive spirit of hardy mountain stock, who, having once taken his stand, would not barter and would not retreat.
“With the Sword of the Lord and of Gideon!” cried their pastor, the Reverend Samuel Doak, with upraised hands, as the mountaineers swung into their saddles. And it is said that all the women took up his words and cried again and again, “With the sword of the Lord and of our Gideons!” To the shouts of their women, as bugles on the wind of dawn, the buckskin-shirted army dashed out upon the mountain trail.